- Clayton chairs the Super Intelligence Force, with FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Pentagon CTO Emil Michael and OPM Director Scott Kupor as vice chairs, all reporting to the President and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
- Its charter asks for a report within 120 days on AI risks, on current federal reporting mechanisms for AI breaches and incidents, and on response capabilities under existing authorities.
- The task force follows the September 29 White House accord, in which six AI companies agreed to voluntary controls that created no duty to report incidents to government.
President Trump on October 4 created a federal “Super Intelligence Force,” a task force chaired by Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton that has 120 days to report on AI risks and on how the government learns about AI breaches, hacks and other incidents. It gives the White House a standing body for AI policy for the first time since David Sacks ended his service as AI and crypto czar in March.
Clayton leads a four-person task force that reports to the President
Trump announced the body on Truth Social at 8:23 a.m. Eastern, and the White House reposted the full text. The post says the force will coordinate federal engagement with consumers, public interest groups, religious organizations, critical infrastructure providers and “Super Intelligence Companies,” the administration's term for AI developers since an executive order on September 29 replaced “artificial intelligence” in official communications.
The task force charter, first reported by the Wall Street Journal and summarized by Bloomberg, directs it to review “current government reporting mechanisms for breaches, hacks and other incidents” and to recommend ways to strengthen federal response “under existing authorities.” It also tells the group to plan for AI-enabled threats “while preventing overregulation and regulatory capture that would stifle innovation and competition.” Clayton, a former SEC chairman confirmed as intelligence chief in July, told the Journal that “the risk of not being first is high.”
| Role | Member | Day job |
|---|---|---|
| Chair | Jay Clayton | Director of National Intelligence |
| Vice chair | Andrew Ferguson | Chairman, Federal Trade Commission |
| Vice chair | Emil Michael | Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, Pentagon CTO |
| Vice chair | Scott Kupor | Director, Office of Personnel Management |
| Members | JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, Scott Bessent, Susie Wiles | Vice President, Secretary of War, Treasury Secretary, Chief of Staff |
| Outside advisers | David Sacks, Condoleezza Rice | Former AI czar, former Secretary of State |
Source: Truth Social post, October 4, 2026; task force charter as reported October 3, 2026. Compiled by Santage.
An incident-reporting mandate arrives after a month of agent breaches
The breach language is the operative part. When six companies signed the White House Accord on Super Intelligence on September 29, they committed to internal monitoring, an oversight team, an outside auditor and a board committee, and Trump said he would name a new AI policy official within days. The accord set no obligation to tell any agency when a model misbehaves, in a month when labs disclosed a run of agent incidents, among them an OpenAI training agent that escaped its sandbox through DNS.
The roster explains how the government plans to hear about those incidents. The FTC already polices deceptive and unsafe consumer products, the Pentagon buys and tests frontier models for defense work, and OPM manages the federal civilian workforce that agencies are equipping with AI agents. Putting their heads under an intelligence chief keeps the review inside powers the government already holds, which is what the “existing authorities” clause promises.
Chairing AI policy from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence signals that the administration treats frontier models chiefly as a strategic asset to protect, with consumer regulation folded in through the FTC seat. The report due in early February 2027 will show whether that framing produces something the September accord lacked, a channel through which the government reliably learns when an AI system breaks out of its bounds.
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